


my own private eden

by hurryup



Series: my own private eden [1]
Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Blackmail, Discussed Howard Link/Allen Walker, Frottage, Humiliation, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Inspired by Aku no Hana, M/M, Manipulation, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-15 22:32:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11240634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hurryup/pseuds/hurryup
Summary: Neah leaned forwards, heart racing."I saw you yesterday," he said in a low, conspiratorial whisper. "I saw you steal Allen's gym uniform."Link's narrow eyes went very, very wide. For a long, breathless moment, he didn't move a muscle. Neither did Neah. He was terrified of disrupting the spell; this moment of power.Young, dangerous, and deadly bored with his shitstain of a small town, sixteen year-old balletomane Neah Campbell's life takes a sharp turn after he accidentally witnesses Howard Link, resident golden boy and class representative, stealing their classmate's gym clothes. Recognising Link as a fellow outsider, Neah blackmails Link into surrendering control of his life. In the process, he sets off a chain of events neither boy could've anticipated.Expect several curious allusions to classical ballet, the indescribable Gothic horror of rural Ontario, and all the passion and madness of a Charles Baudelaire poem.





	my own private eden

 

The sidewalk was chipped and gritty, sloppily patchworked with new black squares where bits had been dug up and relaid in fresh tarmac. There was grime in the grooves of the manhole covers, scrubby yellow weeds reaching out miserably from the breaks in chain link fences, and street signs painted with black and yellow graffiti. A kid on an aluminum scooter trundled down the street, rattling slowly over the speed bump at the crossroads – the handrail on the embankment up to the cycle path rusting where a bolt had been taken.

The round, ruthless sun was warming Neah's black hair. The false promises of spring were everywhere, yellow and pink and shining strangely through the grime. Although the cicadas of June hadn't yet begun their sad little song, soon enough, they would.

The school building was about a ten minute from Neah's house, but he preferred to take his bike. He pedaled down the gritty black road, tires jittering over the uneven lay of the pavement. The scenery whizzed by in a gray-green blur, the vines on the walls blending into the ruddy color of the road signs. The wind whipped through his hair, cooling him off from the undulating rays of light above.

Neah had biked down this road a hundred times, a thousand times. He had the entire layout of the town memorized, every street light, every building, every crack and whorl in the fences. It was all too easy. After all, in small towns like these, nothing ever really changed. They just started to rot.

And that was it.

Pulling in front of the high school building, he skidded to a rough halt. He slung one leg off his bike and climbed down, walking his bike to the nearest stand and locking it in one lazy, janky motion. All around him, students were filing into the main building — precociously coquettish girls with their uniform skirts hiked above the knee, slack-mouthed boys with their ties askew. Standing several feet ahead boy from Neah's class glanced back. When he caught a glimpse of Neah, he pantomimed a shudder, and leaned in close to whisper something into his friend's ear. His friend laughed. An unpleasant, beastly sound.

 _One of these days,_ Neah thought sourly, I'm going to put death in the water. I'm going to poison them all, poison them at the source. I'm going to put death in the very springs that give them life. _That's how you deal with rats, isn't it?_

"You shouldn't be so unsociable,"  Katerina would scold Neah as she prepared his lunch."It's not healthy, spending so much time alone. If you only gave your classmates a chance, I'm sure you'd find yourself surprised."

Perhaps that was true, but Neah wished they were dead all the same. He would have liked to come into classroom that morning and see them all, the girls with glossy lips and the boys with unkempt hair, lying there crying with the pain and dying. He would then help himself to the teacher's desk, he thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever he fancied from their pockets before biking back home. He was never sorry when  had thoughts like this. He only wished they would come true. He hated them all, hated them with a passion that burned his palms and his scalp.

Katerina always told him that hatred was weakness. That kindness was Neah's truest strength. _I know you miss Mana, Neah, but you mustn't turn your back on the world. Come now, darling. Smile for me._

Sometimes, Neah hated her too. 

Her and Mana both.

 

* * *

 

 

The school building was unquestionably the most beautiful structure in town. It was a tall, stone and marble structure built by the Jesuits a hundred years ago, and the only thing in this spitsack rural heap that could be called important-looking. Not that that meant much to Neah. The ancient Romans built their most beautiful works of architecture for wild beasts to fight in.

The school, Neah thought, was full of wild beasts, too.

There were two elementary schools in town, and only one middle school. Most everyone in his grade had been in Neah's classes since childhood, and the years they'd spent circulating the same halls had done nothing to endear Neah to them.

Neah often wondered if he was a changeling child. Some days, he genuinely hoped that was the case. There was an undeniable appeal to the idea. It would be vindicating, knowing there was a reason he felt so thoroughly strange and alien compared to his classmates. That it was a mark he'd been born special. Different.

Perhaps he was truly the son of a river spirit or a cannibalistic demon queen. And perhaps, one of these days, his real mother would come to take him away. She would grab him by the hand and lead him to the place where he belonged — somewhere far, far away from this mass grave of a town, surrounded by rivers and landfills and mountains.

That day had not yet come, though, and so Neah would content himself to sit and wait.

Neah's seat was at the very back of the classroom, right near the window. He liked this spot quite a bit. Whenever class became a little too much to handle, he'd watch the clouds roiling by outside, or the cars trundling by in the streets, or simply stare up ahead at the boy whose desk was directly in front of him.

Howard Link was the class representative, and a dull, upright type, as far as Neah could tell. He had neat, cramped handwriting, exemplary grades, and a sour-milk face that was framed by a wicked-sharp brow line. Good-looking, maybe, but it was hard to say what the source of those good looks were. By and large, Howard Link wasn't particularly worth watching, but Neah watched him anyways. Sheer coincidence of proximity, really.

Although Neah couldn't say he knew Howard Link all that well, he _was_ intimately familiar with the back of Link's neck. Every now and then, during particularly egregious lessons, Neah's would find himself scrutinizing it. He would trade sanitized lectures on the French revolution in exchange for a careful, indulgent examination of the pleated fall of Link's blonde hair. Often, he was tempted to reach out and yank it. It would be funny, he thought, to hear little Goody Shoeshine cry out.

It would be even funnier if he hacked that braid off with scissors while Link’s back was still turned. The very thought made Neah smile with petty, sadistic glee. He imagined snatching his prize up, running all the way home, and then planting it in the ground. Maybe another Link would sprout up from the garden; a thin, serious-eyed flower. Not that Neah could think of any particular use for a second Link. He was only barely interested in the original.

Really, the best part about watching Howard Link, Neah decided, was watching Howard Link watch Allen Walker.

And there was no doubt in Neah's mind that Link did stare at Allen. The fact seemed so painfully obvious that Neah was shocked no one else seemed to have noticed. Every now and then, before class, or during a lesson Link clearly had nothing to learn from, Neah would see Link's head turn to the right, gaze settling on the pale boy sitting three desks down. Puppy love, Neah supposed. Flighty. Saccharine. _Boring._

Neah wondered if it would be funny to tell Allen Walker about Link's little crush. He wondered if it would be funny to expose Link's sexuality to the whole class.

Poor Howard Link. Poor, poor Howard Link, with his perfect grades and crisp blazers and blank, boring face.

Oh, but it _would_ be funny. All of it. After all, the most interesting thing a boy like that could do was _suffer_.

At the toll of the second period bell, the teacher petered off awkwardly, and the students climbed out of their seats to go to lunch.

"C'mon, let's eat on the roof," Lavi sand, slinging an arm around Allen's neck with lazy, sleazy grace. Allen squirmed out of his grip.

"It's way too hot to eat outside," he told Lavi. Neah, still seated, glanced up at Link. He was staring at Allen openly, wistfully. Probably wishing he had the courage to ask Allen to eat lunch with him. How horribly cliched.

Neah went to his locker, grabbed his lunch, and brought it back into the classroom to eat at his seat. Link had apparently had the same idea. As Neah dropped back into his seat, he watched Howard Link unfold his lunch.

A steaming thermos of tea, a sandwich sliced into four even quarts, a pink peach, and another thermos that emitted a rich, brothy scent Neah could catch even a desk away. It all looked homemade, and carefully made at that. Link had probably prepared and packed it himself. After all, the pristine, feminine neatness of his food was in perfect alignment with his sissy personality. Plus, who else would've prepared it for him anyway? Link didn't have a mother. He lived with his uncle, the man with the crisp suits and fancy car. Neah rode by their house every single morning. It was the easily the biggest in town, that castle.

Link's friends, Tokusa and Madarao came back into the classroom. They pushed their desks up against Link's so they could all eat together. How cute. How obnoxious. They talked about everything and nothing, making little jokes that are funny to everyone but Neah. Neah put his head on his desk and took sparse bites of his own food, watching the three of them and pretending he wasn't.

Every now and then, Link seemed to space out from the conversation now and then, sometimes glancing down at a book to read a few paragraphs, sometimes glancing furtively across the classroom at the space between the door and Allen Walker's vacant desk. He bit into his peach. Wiped at the juice that trickled down from the corner of his mouth, lips glistening.

It didn't make for complex entertainment, but it was something.

* * *

 

Fourth period was gym class, which wasn’t Neah’s favorite class, not by a long shot. He allowed himself to be corralled into the locker room, throwing his standard-issue uniform shirt on with a pair of sweatpants, rolling his eyes silently at the surrounding conversation of the boys. They whipped their shirts at one another and whooped and wailed, the air thick with the stench of some boy’s Axe body spray — a _terribly_ misguided scent.

Once outside, Neah tried to make himself as scarce as possible, lingering at the edge of the outdoor track. He scuffed his shoe and wandered aimlessly without really participating, eyes glossing over Howard Link and Allen Walker and all the sweat-soaked beasts of summer to stare at the vast, empty sky, filled with vast, empty sunshine.

"Campbell!" At the shriek of the whistle, Neah glanced up. Their coach, a hard-faced man in his forties, glared down at him resolutely. His small, watery eyes were jaundiced and shot through with blood. "Could you at least pretend to put some effort in?"

_Effort? On this? No fucking point, shitbug._

"Not interested," Neah said. His fingers curled into a little pantomime wave. "Buh-bye now, sir."

The coach’s sick little eyes went narrow.

"Campbell, you’ve got to fix your attitude before—”

"Yeah, no, definitely not interested," Neah said. He plucked absently at his uniform shirt, the big printed C in Campbell. He couldn’t keep himself from smiling, all teeth and no mirth. “Please feel free to fuck off at your earliest convenience, sir.”

There was a beat. A beat of total,brilliant, beautiful silence. The coach’s weathered, leathery face coloured red, very slowly, as though he was being cooked over a hot stove. It was pretty funny, actually. Funny enough that Neah found himself biting back the harsh bark of a laugh.

“My office,” the coach said. _“Now.”_

 

* * *

 

 

By the time Neah was allowed to go, the last bell had already rung. He was still dressed in his gym uniform, he realized. His clothes were still in the boys' locker room, trapped in the dinghy interior of his own gym locker. At least it would be empty, he thought. He wasn't much in the mood to hear the other boys posture and strut. Right about now, all he wanted was to take his bike out down by the river in search of a little peace and quiet.

The hallways floors were lined with aging linoleum and smelled sharply of ammonia. Neah shouldered his backpack over one shoulder as he made his way back to the boy's changing room, shoes scuffing quietly against the tiles as he went. The black rubber soles were beginning to wear thin, but he was certain Katerina would resist buying a new pair if he asked. One more year, Neah. You just need to make them last one more year.

Neah stopped at the grilled changing room door, then paused, realizing it had been left ajar. Neah reached into his pocket for his phone, bringing the screen to life with an idle tap. It was 3:55 PM. Most of the students should have filed out of the school by now — maybe a few were lingering for an after-school club.

Something kept Neah from pushing the door wide open to grab his gym bag from his locker. Instead, he leaned forwards carefully, just peeking through the loose partition between the door and wall. Howard Link was standing inside, pressed sharp and neat in his uniform blazer and black trousers, fastidious braid falling smoothly down over his back.

Neah frowned. Link was holding something in his hands. Fabric? Neah frowned, craning forwards to see. A gym shirt, by the look of it, but it seemed too small to be Link's own. Neah supposed someone had forgotten theirs by accident. Maybe Link was planning on bringing it to the lost and found. Such a good boy.

Then, Neah realized something. Something peculiar, something that changed his entire understanding of the situation. The cotton fold of the shirt shifted in Link's hands, exposing the glossy white W in Walker — just as Link lifted the shirt up to his face to breathe it in deep.

Link was holding Allen Walker's gym shirt.

What was more, he was sniffing it. He was standing alone, smelling Allen's clothes — and by God, if his expression didn't look downright _worshipful_.

All at one, Neah realized his heart was hammering.  Neah felt as though the sun had somehow gotten into his body; it was burning up at his very core, hot, sweet, manic, helter-skelter. He could feel it opening  up and blooming in his stomach like flower, like a drop of yellow ink. It was spilling over, overflowing, and echoing out silently throughout the room — a dying star, a supernova expanding in the space between Neah, Link, and Allen's unwashed gym shirt. Incredible. Uncontrollable.

In that moment, Neah felt closer to Link than any other human alive. He understood him. He saw him. In this one low, ugly, transfixing moment, Link's mask had slipped, leaving the reality of his being completely exposed to Neah's prying eyes.

Howard Link was a sick little pervert.

Rotten to the core, as rotten as they come.

Slowly, as if moving through deep water, Neah lifted his phone. The universe and stars must have aligned for him for just that once, just for that moment, because the photo he snapped was the most incandescently perfect still image he could have hoped for. Link's figure, frozen forever in the frame of Neah's screen, stood with enraptured poise, his face buried into the soft fold of Allen's shirt.

Link began to straighten up. Barely daring to breathe, Neah watched as Link's fingers fisted hard into Allen's shirt as he yanked himself away from it, he shoved the article into his own backpack in a hurried, ashamed gesture.

Realizing Link was about to make his escape, Neah backed up into the nearest closet very quickly, out of sight. He held his breath, listening for the rapid pittetpatter of Link's footsteps briskly racing down, down, down the hallway. He stayed there long after he was certain Link was already gone, clutching his phone to his chest and reveling in that which he'd just witnessed.

It was nice, knowing there was someone in this grotesque little town just as grotesque as Neah himself.

Really, really fucking nice.

 

* * *

 

Neah thought about Link all night, examining and reexamining his accidental purveyance with such fascination and such dedication that sleep became a secondary concern. He staggered awake twenty minutes too late, Katerina knocking on his bedroom door to scold him into consciousness. Fumbling on his buttons, he threw his uniform on, hopping on one foot to wrangle with his shoe as he pushed the front door open with one hand.

Neah took his bike again, but instantly wished he hadn't; today was cold, making the upwards breeze off his bicycle just barely tolerable.

Steadily, the clouds meandered their way down from the cycle path to the bridge. They were practically black, heavy with the promise of rain. Behind them, the sky had turned uniformly gray. Teflon gray. Cordite gray. Magnum pistol gray. Gray like the underpass, gray like the raging river itself, running its monotone course through town another two miles down.

He locked his bike by the gate and went to his desk immediately. Howard Link was already sitting at his desk, nose in a book. His expression was calm. Guiltless. Neah squirmed in his seat, practically shaking with the thrill of secrecy.

First period passed Neah by in a blur. From her perch up above, their teacher went on and on in a breathy monotone about French expressionism, and Neah didn't hear a goddamn word. He could do nothing but fix his eyes on the graceful slope of Link's neck — the point where his nape became his shoulders.

Once or twice, Neah found himself glancing down at his phone from underneath his desk. For seconds at a time, he would stare ecstatically at the the photograph he'd snapped of Link. It really was a beautiful picture. The perfect representation of Link's crimes. Link's abandon, Link's weakness, Link's sick passion. You could even make out the first half of the word _Walker_ if you knew to look for it.

 _The most interesting thing a boy like that can do is suffer._ Until yesterday, this was something he'd truly believed — and he found himself repeating those same words in his head again and again and again, testing them, toying with them, taking them to each of their logical extremes.

He'd been wrong about Link. Wrong about the kind of boy Link was. An error in judgement he would not make twice, now that he knew better.

Who'd have guessed that Neah and Link were cut from the same cloth, after all? After all, Link was a closet pervert, and what was a pervert but a dark sensualist — a man held hostage by his dreams? Neah, too, was possessed by some foul dreams. Dreams that existed in the dark woods beyond the norms and expectations of society. Neah, too, was perverse.

The only difference was that Link smothered his perversion behind a mask of normalcy.

An awful waste, truly.

Neah wanted to see that mask fall. He wanted to see it splinter into a thousand tiny pieces. He wanted it to shatter between his teeth like hard candy. He wanted to expose the sickness beneath.

To reveal the beast beneath. That, he decided, was the most interesting thing a boy like Link could do.

Just before second period started, Allen Walker jumped up from his seat and went to the front of the class. Link shut his book, lifting his head to watch Allen. In turn, Neah lifted his head to study Link.

"Hey, I forgot my gym shirt in the boy's locker room yesterday," Allen called out. "I went to check this morning, but I couldn't find it. If anyone sees it, let me know?"

Link stared at Allen. He bit his lower lip, worrying the flesh with his teeth. Neah held his breath, waiting to see what he'd do, how he'd answer.

Then, without saying a single word, Link opened his book back up and returned to the same page he'd been reading. Allen returned to his desk, around which Lenalee, Lavi, and Kanda were jockeying, making idle, vapid conversation. Neah was very nearly moved to the point of tears. It took every shred of his self-control to keep himself from standing up and clapping.

 _My dear, sweet Howard Link,_ Neah thought.  _Oh, you are glorious! Bravo, my dancer in the dark! Bravo!_

* * *

 

"Yo, golden boy," Neah whispered at the sound of the lunch bell. He leaned forwards in his seat to speak directly against the shell of Link's ear. Link startled. Neah couldn't blame him. They'd been in the same classes for all of ten years, and this was the first time Neah had ever initiated conversation with Link.

Link turned around in his seat slowly. His brown eyes were flashing with a wary iciness.

"Can I help you?" He asked. He spoke with an air of intense politeness that promised nothing. The specific tone and timbre of his voice carried that air beautifully — he had a deep, mellifluous voice. Mature. It suited him very nicely.

"I need to talk to you," Neah said. He leaned forwards on his elbows, unable to keep himself from preening.

"Well, we're talking right now." Link frowned uncertainly.

"I need to talk to you _alone_ , dipshit," Neah rolled his eyes. Link blinked, looking taken-aback. Whatever. "Come with me into the library, okay?"

Link frowned, hesitating. He glanced across the classroom, where Tokusa and Madarao were filing out of their desks to grab their lunch — and then to Allen, all-shining and all-laughing.

"It'll only take five minutes," Neah said. Impatient, he reached out to jab Link in the ribs, fighting for his full attention. "Trust me, it's important."

Link dragged his eyes away from the door to look at Neah reluctantly. Something in Neah's eyes must have unsettled him, because he shifted uncomfortably beneath his gaze. His lips pursed into a thin line, brows drawing together in a look of vague confusion. Clever boy sensed something was amiss. Well, he'd find out just what very, very soon.

"Alright," he agreed, teeth worrying the pink flesh of his lower lip. "If you insist."

Neah grinned wolfishly.

"Excellent."

He jumped up at his desk and swung his legs over it, yanking Link to his own feet with a hand on his sleeve. Link spluttered and stumbled upright, staggering forwards into a quick walk and Neah lead him out the classroom and down the hall.

"Not so fast," Link protested, wriggling under Neah's vice-like grip in an attempt to wrench his arm free, but Neah was resolute. Rounding the corner, he tightened his hold to loop around Neah's wrist, practically dragging him down helplessly as they walked.

Lovely little Link would have to get used to being Neah's to control, sooner or later. Why not start now?

The library was empty, like it always was at this hour. Good. Neah dragged Link down the aisles, seeking the most remote, desolate stack possible. Link trudged after Neah, resigned to be corralled about like a horse in need of a tether. Neah settled on a spot in the non-fiction section, between biology and psychology textbooks from the 80s that have likely never been checked out since the day they were first shelved.

Neah turned to face Link.  The library smelled of aging paper, mildew, and dust. The result was an usual potpourri, especially when combined with the lingering sweetness of the ancient librarian's perfume — a spiced-up carnation concoction with troubled notes of cardamom and turmeric. Among it all was Link, framed among the shelves with a nervousness that succeeded in being quite charming. Brows still quirked, mouth still drawn into that quizzical line, standing, just standing, not knowing what judgement would befall him.

Neah leaned forwards, heart racing.

"I saw you yesterday," he said in a low, conspiratorial whisper. "I saw you steal Allen's gym shirt."

Link's narrow eyes went very, very wide. For a long, breathless moment, he didn't move a muscle. Neither did Neah. He was terrified of disrupting the spell; his moment of power.

Oh, Link's look of complete shock, it was just priceless!

"Excuse me?" Link said. He sounded like he was trying very, very hard indeed to keep his cool. How admirable. Such a shame Neah saw right through it.

"You heard me," Neah said. He couldn't keep himself from smiling, a sharp, nasty thing; no love, only teeth. "I saw the way you were sniffing it, too. You've really got it hot for the little fucker, don't you?"

Reflexively, Link took a step back. The whites of his eyes were showing very clearly, betraying his panic.

"You've got the wrong idea," he choked out. "I found it. I was going to return it to him. As a favor."

Neah hummed, moving to close the distance Link had so valiantly attempted to create.

"Is that so?" Neah's eyes roamed over Link's face carefully. There was a red tint to Link's brown eyes, like rust, or dry blood. How curious. "Were you going to return it today?"

"Yes!" Link breathed. "Yes, of course."

"Fine. Then it must be in your bag, right?" Neah smiled. "I mean, if you were gonna return it today, you must have it with you today. Just take me to your locker and show it to me. If you can do that, I'll leave you be."

Link didn't move a fucking muscle.

"Unless you took it home with you, that is," Neah went on, voice lowering an octave.

Link didn't say a fucking word.

"That's what I thought," Neah said softly. He reached into his pocket for his phone, thumbing the lock open with an idle swipe. "Look. I even managed to get a picture. Wanna see?"

Link's face was gaunt, blank. He trembled like dry leaves in a heavy wind.

"No way."

Neah pulled the photo up, lifting his phone so that Link could see.

"You see that, Howard? That's your face, all crushed up against Allen's sweaty, unwashed uniform. Isn't that gross?" Neah pressed one hand to his lips, tracing his own catlike smile with one finger. "And to think you took it home with you, too. Gosh, _what_ did you do with it? Rub it all over your body? Keep it under your pillow while you slept? Wrap it around your dick while you—"

"None of that is true!" Link cried out, exploding with mortified outrage. His face was flushing bright, bright red — a blaze of a blush. Remembering himself, he lowered his voice. "Don't be — don't be so _crude_."

"Wow, am I really the crude here? You know, I think Allen might disagree if he saw this picture." Neah tap the home button of his phone, and the screen went dark with the sound of a shutter. "My oh _my,_ who knows what he'd think of you?"

Link was very still, but his eyes roved over Neah frantically, bouncing up from his feet to his face with astonished furor.

"What do you want from me?" Link said. His tone was carefully constructed, but all the same, Neah could see he was desperate. Beaten. Neah's smile widened, loving Link all the more for this capitulation.

"I'm not here to hurt you, Link. In fact, I think I can help you," Neah said. "But first, let's make a deal. A contract, if you will."

"A contract?"

"I'll keep your secret. I won't even make any other copies of this picture, right here," "In exchange... you do whatever I want, whenever I want it."

Link's eyes went wide, then narrowed abruptly. His posture was ramrod straight, even now, not sagging for a minute. He had a spine.

"Do I make myself clear?" Neah said when Link didn't immediately respond. Link gave him a long, impassive look.

"I don't believe I'm being offered a choice."

"Then the contract is sealed," Neah grinned. He darted forwards, grabbing Link's hand to squeeze it for a moment. Link attempted to squirm away, but once more, Neah's grip proved indomitable.  "Now, listen carefully, Link. Here's your first order. Meet me at the front gate once school is over. You and I are gonna take a little trip."

* * *

The riverside was a fifteen minute walk from the school. On bike, it took just a little over five minutes. Link walked to school, which meant there was only one bike between the two of them. With this in mind, Neah decided they would go on foot. He guided his bike alongside the both of them as they walked, up the main road and towards the highway, up the hill and over the bridge the river ran beneath.

A narrow trail was etched into the hill face like bunting on the side of a wedding cake, a switchback stone-and-mud path that zigzagged down the slope, under the black bridge, and down to the edge of the dirty river. Near the top, the trail had been washed out by March's flashflood rains, and the stone was smooth and bare. The path grew wilder and more unkempt the further you climbed down, with thickets of wild grass, brown shrubbery, and overgrown dandelions snarling upwards to catch underneath Link and Neah's feet.

Neah lead the way, crashing through tall grasses and low shrubs, thin dry branches catching him and thwacking back to smack Link. When the path grew too steep to continue, Neah hurtled from a large rock to another some six feet down, skidding his way hectically down the rocky riverbank.

Straightening up, Neah wiped his muddy hands against his knees. He turned and waited for Link to make the leap and follow him. Link didn't, not at first. He stood with one foot planted at the edge of the hillside, looking ill at ease.

“Don’t be such a fucking pussy,” Neah yelled out over the sound of the gray river. "Jump down!"

Link toed at the overgrown undergrowth, delicately prying a fine-bristled burr from the upper thigh of his slacks.

“Don't be rude,” he said, but he didn't dare raise his voice to Neah and it came out in a self-fulfilling pussy little sotto, a pussy little mewl. Neah could barely hear his pussy little boy voice over the crashing, raging current of the river. "This is dangerous, Neah. One of us could easily slip and fall in."

"Oh, come on! You think Allen wants to fuck a scared little boy?" Neah called out, loud, and Link flinched. Probably terrified that someone, somewhere, might somehow be listening, that his perverted little obsession might be exposed. "Jump down, or I'll tell our whole class about how you spy on Allen in the boy's changing room."

Link colored, red as roses. "I don't— "

"How you go home every day and jerk off in the shower, thinking about his pale, skinny, adolescent body..."

"I _don't!_ I don't, and you _know_ I don't— "

"For God's sake, you fucking coward, just jump down!"

Link hesitated, blanched.

Then, with unspringing caution, he jumped down. He didn't stumble across the slick stones like Neah had expected he would. Instead, there was a careful grace to his movements. Neah was almost disappointed. It would've been funny, seeing Link trip. It would've been really, really fun if Link fell over and into the sweep of the river. Neah would have liked to see Link soaking wet. He'd look like a drowned puppy, for sure.

Link came over to Neah's side, looking wary.

"It's okay,"  Neah said. "Hey, hey. Don't you fret, Howie. Your secret is safe with me."

"It's not a secret," Link said, tone impressively level. Laudably, really. "To be a secret, it would have to be true. None of that was true."

"Hey, you can trust me, Link. I don't mind at all. I don't even mind if you rub Allen's uniform all over your body when you're alone. I don't even mind if you choke yourself on it, licking and sniffing while you rub one out."

Link's blush didn't fade, not for a minute, but he didn't splutter or shout like Neah thought he might. He just looked at Neah steadily, hard-eyed and tight-lipped with controlled, purposeful anger.

"I can't tell if you're a compulsive liar, a sadist, or genuinely delusional."

"None of the above," Neah said. He grinned. "I'm an altruist, Link. I'm here to help you."

Link pushed his bangs out of his face and frowned uneasily.

"I find that difficult to believe."

Neah rolled his eyes.

"Listen, Link. Here's the thing. I know you better than you know yourself," he said. "That's why you need my help. That's why we're here today."

Neah stepped down over the rocks, right to the edge of the river. The water lapped gently against the tips of his black school-issue shoes.

"Hardly anyone ever comes out here, and nobody ever comes down to the riverbank. Even if someone was walking up there, over the bridge," Neah pointed to the highway moving through the mountains, "they wouldn't be able to hear us down here because of the water."

Rushing river, crushing river, crashing river, dashing river. Link stalled, eyes flickering to the water, to the bridge above them, to Neah's feline smile.

"What, precisely, is this in service of?" He asked.

"It mean I can say whatever the hell I want," Neah said. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, loud enough that Link flinched, "Howard Link is a sick fucking pervert! Link wants Allen Walker's mouth around his dick!"

"Stop!" Link said immediately, voice raw with horror. He glanced about wildly, desperately seeking out an imaginary crowd of witnessing onlookers.

"Nobody can hear us," Neah repeated, rolling his eyes at Link's self-conscious terror. He turned to face Link, stepping in very close, close enough that he could observe the frenzied dilation of Link's pupils. "In fact, I think it'd be good if you did a little yelling too, Link. Come on. Tell the world what a big, horny sicko you are. Admit it. I bet it'll feel good."

For a brief moment, Link seemed to stop breathing. He was blushing red from his neck to his ears.

"I'm not..."

"This is an _order_ , Link," Neah said, edging in close, as close as he could come without brushing up against Link. This close, he could make out the shade and nuance of each individual eyelash. They fluttered up and down from his cheeks to his brow, alarmed, like frightened butterflies.  "I'm not asking, I'm _telling_ you to do this. Unless you want to break our contract?"

Link looked at Neah helplessly. Their eyes held, catlike gold into bloody, murky brown.

Then, Link's gaze flickered away, eyes falling to his feet. He feigned interest in the damp stones and weeds beneath his feet, unable or unwilling to meet Neah's expression of happy savagery.

"I made a thoughtless mistake," he said, soft yet certain. Annoying. Annoying, annoying, prissy, pussy little boy.  "That is  my problem. One thoughtless, ridiculous mistake in the heat of the moment. The rest is your deranged imagination. I''m not... what you said."

"You see this picture?" Neah fumbled for his phone, swiping through his password rapidly. Roughly, he yanked up the photograph of Link standing in the dark. "You see that? That's one hell of a mistake, Link! But you must have enjoyed it, right? It certainly looks like you were enjoying it."

Link glanced away immediately, craning his neck away. Doing everything in his power to avoid the ugly, nasty truth that was staring him directly in the face.

All the same, Link stepped down next to Neah, facing the river. It surged before them, a silent witness, flushed and swollen with the hot rains of early spring.

“Go ahead and yell it out,” Neah said. He waggled his phone, a silent taunt. “Come on, Howie. Howie, Howie, _Howie_. I won’t tell anybody.”

Link looked at the river. There was an uncharacteristically intense look in his eyes.

"I'm in love with Allen Walker!" He yelled, loud and clear. The sound of it traveled far across the river, echoing out into the mountains, across the highway. Into the Something and the Nothing and their shitstack of a town. He rounded on Neah then, the look in his eyes hardening into something cold and resolute. Like ice. "I love him, and you can't even possibly understand what that feels like."

Something like rage began to swirl in Neah’s gut; a white-hot, flaming heat to rival Link’s inpenetrable frost.

Oh, that stupid, stupid, stupid little boy!

"Bullshit," Neah snarled. He grabbed Link by the collar, shoving his phone into his face so close that Link couldn’t possibly look away.  "This look like love to you, huh? You wanna fuck him, don't you?"

"Don't be disgusting,” Link snapped back. He shrugged off Neah’s hands in one violent motion, but did not back up. "What I feel for him isn't so cheap. So _obscene.”_

"Yeah, this right here looks real _pure_ to me!" Neah’s phone was trembling in the grip of his hands. He’d never felt so frustrated in his entire life — stupid, lying, cowardly Link! Neah took a slow breath. _"My name is Howard Link, and I'm a big, horny sicko._ Say it, or I forward this picture to everyone in our class."

Link froze.

“You’re joking.”

“Say it right now!” Neah said, agitated. “Say it right now, or it’s all over. You want Allen to know what you’ve done?”

Link said nothing, for a long moment. Neah watched him, eyes wild with anticipation. He realized, just then, that his breathing had grown ragged, and his pulse was hammering. When had that happened? Probably the moment Link had tried to do something as stupid as bring _love_ into this.

As if something as rare and indescribably beautiful as love could ever exist in this shitheap of a town! It’d be like expecting a flower to blossom in a barren field. A vivid red rose in an endless field of mud. Maybe on the other side of mountains, there could be such thing as love. But not here. All the good, shining things — this town swallowed them up and choked the life from them.

Idiot boy. Idiot _Link._

He’d learn soon enough.

"My name is Howard Link,” Link said lifelessly, staring down at the shining stones. “I'm a big, horny sicko."

Neah frowned.

"You don't sound like you mean it."

"You can make me say whatever you'd like, Neah,” Link said steadily. He looked up, meeting Neah’s eyes with a clarity and a determination that was… a little astonishing, really. “But I'm afraid you can't make me believe it."

Neah stared at Link. Link stared back, unafraid, muddy red-brown into gold. A stray dog and a feral cat.

“It’s the truth,” Neah said.

“It’s not."

Neah slapped Link dead in the face.

“Say it again,” Neah said.

Link dragged his eyes back to meet Neah’s. Stubborn boy. Stupid boy.

“I’m a big, horny sicko,” Link said. This wasn’t a confession. It was a recitation.

Neah slapped him a second time.

“Again!”

“I’m a big, horny sicko.”

_Say it like you mean it, you stupid fucking coward!_

Neah raised his hand a third time. Link flinched.

_Pathetic!_

Neah hesitated. His fingers curled up tentatively. Slowly, without so much as laying a finger on Link, he lowered his hand back to his side. Link let out a visible sigh of relief.

"Oh, you're a stubborn thing, aren't you?" Neah said. He smiled, hard and unkind. "This will be harder than I thought."

"What will?"

"Getting you to drop your mask."

"That's absurd," Link said. "There is no mask."

Neah went ahead and delivered that third slap. Link had gone ahead and squandered what little mercy he had earned.

"Go home," he said. "We'll continue this another day."

Link reached up to touch his own cheek. There was a blankness in his expression, one that actually managed to scare Neah a little. Neah realized, then, just how eerily unaffected Link had been by Neah's violence. He'd taken it with the mute humility of a boy who was used to being slapped around and a little resigned to it.

"Another day?" Link said. He frowned, hand still cupping his bright red cheek. "Are you not satisfied?"

"Whatever I want, whenever I want," Neah said. "That was the contract."

He turned around and began to climb his way up back to his bike.

All the while, his palms itched with rage.

_I love him, and you can't even understand what that feels like._

Link was right, and that stung.

* * *

 

Neah waited two days to deliver his next order.

This order, he decided, would be best given in the morning. He decided to catch Link before he left the house. He woke up early, dressing and eating hurriedly. Katerina hadn't even woken up by the time Neah was throwing his bag over one shoulder and unlocking his bike.

He rode down to Link's house, the big, beautiful white house on the highest hill. There was no car in the driveway when he arrived, meaning that Link's uncle, Mr. Leverrier of the town's one and only accounting firm, had already left for the office. That was good. That meant Neah and Link would have some privacy.

He ditched his bike by the road and ran up to the front door, already giddy with power. Impatient, he rang the doorbell three times in quick succession; the result was a series of manic, messy trills. As fitting a harbinger for Neah's presence as anything.

Link was already dressed when he answered the door, looking as clean and sharp as ever in his school uniform: white shirt, black blazer, black slacks, black shoes. The deep blue of his tie provided a singular but still muted splash of color. Neah never wore the tie, or the blazer for that matter. Neah glanced over Link's shoulder and into his home. He could see into Link's kitchen, a perfectly white room, like an empty box. On the table was a pot of espresso and a set of lack china cups and a box of Italian biscotti. A newspaper was folded into quarters, well-creased. Light spilled into the cavernous hallway through the open front door.

"Neah," Link said. Shock flashed in his eyes for a moment. Then, he threw a curtain of cool neutrality over his expression. He did a fair job of maintaining this detached blankness, but his hand curled around the doorknob a little tighter, like he was thinking of shutting it right in Neah's face.

"Good morning," Neah said cheerfully. He waited for a long moment, during which Link barely moved, just stood there with a look of silent dread. Neah cleared his throat. "Aren't you going to wish me a good morning?"

Neah waited. Link sighed.

"Good morning, Neah," he said politely. Then, with a rueful little expression that was already expecting the worst, he asked, "Is there something I can do for you?"

Neah beamed. He leaned in against the side of Link's front stoop, strategically placing himself so that he could easily catch the door with one foot if Link tried to close it.

"You know what, Link? There is something you can do for me," Neah said.

Link rolled his cuff up to expose a silver watch. He frowned down at it.

"And I suppose this _something_ cannot wait until later?"

"Oh, it really can't," Neah said. "In fact, I'm very glad I was able to catch you before you left. You see, Link, you really disappointed me by the river the other day. I thought I might be able to get an honest reaction from you. But you're more stubborn than you look, aren't you?"

Link's expression went hard, like he'd just tasted something very sour. He didn't move to interrupt Neah though, which Neah appreciated. Neah continued, a strange smile working itself up over his face.

"Luckily, I was able to think of a way for you to make it up for me. A very special, very simple little way. Now, I'm about to give you an order, Link. Are you ready to hear it?"

Link didn't say anything, just stared at Neah guardedly. Neah was becoming familiar with this little face. To him, it meant _yes_.

Giddy, Neah leaned in very close, so close he could feel the startled pull of Link's breath against his cheek. He moved to whisper directly into Link's ear, so close his lips nearly grazed the clear skin of his neck.

"Link, you're going to go back inside and put Allen's gym shirt on underneath your clothes. And you're going to wear it to school. All. Day."

* * *

The last of the spring rain came down that day, cold and wet. From his seat near the window, Neah watched the rain gutters swell with water and overflow. The surging of the water matches his mood, which was rising and flooding like the last movement of an operatic symphony.

In the seat in front of him, Link is sitting and staring at the blackboard with a ramrod straight spine. At a glance, he looked the same as always, his broad shoulders clad in his black blazer, neat braid falling against his back in a perfect, perfect plait. Neah was only able to spot the difference because he knew where to look.

Just at the collar of his shirt, only faintly visible, was the grey hint of Allen's shirt, hidden beneath his everyday uniform like the shameful secret it was.

There was no way for Link to ignore it or forget about it, and Neah relished that. Allen's shirt was just a little too small, a little too tight, and Link was surely being constricted with every movement he made. A reminder of his perversion. Of his crimes against Allen. His hands shook a little over his textbooks, and whenever Madarao or Tokusa or another friend addressed him, he sounded uncharacteristically distracted, to the point that one girl even asked if Link was feeling alright.

"I might be coming down with something," Link had said. "I'm sure it's nothing to worry about."

 _Liar,_ Neah thought. He bounced in his seat, exhilarated. _Liar, liar, dirty little liar!_

Link didn't stare at Allen once, either. In fact, he seemed to desperate to avoid Allen's eyes, even when Allen drifted over for a short conversation.

"You're doing great," Neah whispered in Link's ear as the lunch bell rang. "Meet me at the gate after school again."

Link gripped his pen all the tighter and, helplessly, he shivered.

* * *

At the gate, Neah instructed Link to take off his backpack and sit on it. Link did, watching Neah circle the bicycle expectantly. He slid up behind Link, finding there was just barely enough room. He kept his own bag on, and slung Link's over the handlebars carefully.

"Take us to the river," Neah said, He tucked his chin on top of Link's shoulder, wrapping his arms around Link's waist for balance. Link startled against Neah, perhaps embarrassed, but made no attempt to shrug Neah's hands off. "Be quick about it, too. I won't tolerate laziness, Howard. Not from you."

"You don't tolerate much, do you?" Link asked. He gripped the handlebars tight, eyes on the road ahead of them. He kicked off the breaks, started peddling. The road whispered against the wheels of their bicycle, little pieces of broken asphalt catching here or there and causing the tires to hiss.

"On the contrary," Neah said, laughing gently, feeling the reverberation of that sound travel over Link's body. Link, Neah was realizing, was more athletic than he'd first thought. Pedaling for the weight of two could hardly be an easy task, but Link maneuvered them down the road like it was nothing. Commendable, really. "God, I put up with so much. I'm a saint, really. Really. You're all lucky I'm this patient. If I wasn't, I'd be something much, much worse."

"You're already awful," Link said crisply. Neah let out a breathy little gasp.

"How rude, Link! You really ought to treat your friends with more respect."

"Are we really friends?" Link wondered out loud. His was breath a little short. How cute.

Link turned the corner, the bike speeding down a residential road and sloping out onto the main road. Neah could hear the crickets chirping from the uncut grass. Polystrone crunched beneath their wheels; trash floating down the road from an overturned dumpster a half-block down. The sky, bright and blue and as empty as it was vast.

"Of course we're friends," Neah said. He pressed his nose to the small of Link's back and breathed in deep, loving the sweet, soapy scent of Link's uniform-issue button-down, loving the thrilling knowledge of what he was wearing beneath it. "Friends keep each other's secrets, don't they?"

The road went on and on beneath their battered wheels, nightmarishly black where the tarmac was at its freshest. Link turned them off the main road, onto the highway. They were skirting past the edge of town. They were close, now, to the riverside. Neah could smell the cool note of freshwater in the air, sweetly dampening the wind in his hair.

"Well, I don't know any of your secrets," Link said eventually. The wind was cold, but Link's body was warm. Neah pressed in close, chasing that faint heat.

"Would you like to?"

"I don't know," Link said. He continued pedaling, abdominal muscles tense as tightrope where Neah's arms were looped across them. "It was only a thought."

Neah hummed.

"I wouldn't mind telling you," he said. "But only because we're such good friends."

"You really don't have to do that," Link demurred.

"Hey," Neah said. "It's fine. I want to tell you. Okay?"

Link didn't say anything. Just kept pedaling down the long road, crossing over the tracks and mounting up, up, up the hillside. Neah could hear the river, stretching out through narrow valleys. It ran as far as the eye could see, carving a path through the mountains, water running swiftly over glossy black stones, pipes, and gleaming scraps of upstream trash.

"One day, I'm gonna leave this all behind," Neah whispered. Eyes on the thistles and weeds and waste that fenced the long road in, yellow and brown. With one hand, he pointed over Link's shoulder, sketching a vague outline over the distant mountains with his index finger. "I'm gonna travel far, far away, way past those mountains, and I'm never coming back. Not ever."

Link was still silent. Still, Neah knew that he'd listened, and that he was thinking about it. He wrapped his arms around Link a little tighter. Link's flat stomach was twitching beneath his arms. His firm back  was sliding up against Neah's chest. Warm-bodied, sweet-smelling, sick-minded, perverted, pathetic, wonderful Link. Neah's eyes fluttered shut.

There was a peculiar pleasure in being so physically close to another human being. Neah had never known, not until now.

Suddenly, they skidded to a halt. Neah opened his eyes. They'd breaked at the center of the bridge, the side of bike resting right up against the railing. The river was roaring directly beneath them.

"We're here," Link said. He was steadying them with one foot planted firmly against the asphalt. Neah leaned back.

"So we are."

They climbed off the bike and ditched it by the side of the road. Neah climbed over the railing and down the hill. Link followed without a word. Having made the trek once before, he was a little more confident now. When Neah said "Jump!" Link jumped, landing on both feet with a curiously arabesque grace. They skidded down to the river shore together.

Neah sat down on a big rock, legs tucked underneath him. Link watched him, looking expectant.

"Hey, quit gawking," Neah said. "You'll make a boy nervous. Christ."

Link opened his mouth like he was about to say something, then apparently thought the better of it. He sat down across from Neah, right on the edge of an ancient, dry sewage pipe.

"This is nice, isn't it?" Neah asked. He looked at Link, the hint of gray poking out from underneath his white shirt collar. It made something stir low in his gut. Neah wasn't quite sure what it was, but it was hot and heavy. Link frowned, steepling his fingers over his lap. Link's hands were long and short-nailed, and he articulated them with unusual care.

"Are we just going to sit here?"

"For now," Neah said. For the time being, he was happy enough just to stare at Link's neck and collar, eyes hungry for that sliver of gray, a sliver of a crack in Link's mask. Soon, just peeping through the crack wouldn't be enough, but for now, it was heaven.

"I see," Link said. "Had I known, I'd have brought my bag down with me."

"Oh, yeah? What for?"

"Well, studying," Link said. "We have provincial exams in about a month, remember?"

"Pfft," Neah said. He leaned back against the rock face, laughing. "C'mon. Ease up a little, golden boy."

"Ease up? Around you? Unlikely," Link said. Neah laughed again.

He liked being alone with Link.

"Have you... really never left town?" Link asked, sudden but genuine, like he really wanted to know and couldn't hold back from asking. Neah frowned. He shook his head, no. "Hm."

He pushed up off the stony pipe, standing up at full height. Link really was sort of pretty, Neah thought, in this sort of flat, fading light. It made the sharp contours of his face look a little softer, and rather than austere, the hard line of his brows now seemed pleasantly quizzical.

"About an hour and a half down the highway, there's a big chain of shopping outlets," Link said, pointing across the bridge and down the eastbound highway. His arm rotated to gesture vaguely over the sweeping mountains. "Over beyond those hills, it's mostly farmland. If you continue to drive alongside the creek, you should eventually reach North Bay. There isn't much to see there, though."

Link turned around, squinting against the sunlight as he pointed back towards town. "If you drive about four hours in the other direction, you should eventually reach Ottawa. Two more, and there's Montreal."

Link glanced back at Neah expectantly. Neah realized, somewhat belatedly, that he'd gone incredibly quiet.

"You make it sound like escape is impossible," Neah gritted out, speaking only to fill silence. Internally, he was reeling. For so long, he'd been fixated on the thought of running away, but he'd never once given thought to where he might possibly run to.

"That was never my intention," Link said. "I'm simply letting you know what's out there."

"What if I just keep going?" Neah asked.

Link frowned.

"I suppose you could drive up to Quebec City from Montreal," he said. "French would be a considerable asset. I suppose you could also cross the border from Granby into New York. Do you have a passport?"

Neah didn't have a passport. He didn't speak French, either. He also couldn't drive, which was beginning to seem like a dizzyingly huge problem. He pushed the thought from his mind, focusing on his growing irritation towards Link. Link and all his questions. Link just didn't have the guts to imagine  life outside this spitshit small town. He didn't have the imagination.

Link had the potential, Neah knew. The potential to be different. All he needed was Neah's imagination. If Neah could lend him that, they'd be set.

Then, maybe, Link would come with him.

"Take your shirt and blazer off," Neah said, knowing it was abrupt and not caring at all. Link froze up.

"Excuse me?"

"Just the shirt and blazer. I wanna see you in Allen's gym shirt," Neah said. A twitch was beginning in his fingers, and for a bright, hysterical moment he was tempted to pin Link to the ground and spread Link's shirt open himself. "That's an order, Link!"

Even though it was an order, it took Link a long time to obey. He just kept standing and hesitating, looking for an escape from the situation and finding none. He started with his blazer, yanking it from his shoulders in one sharp tug. His movements were quick, methodical, even janky —  _ashamed._ He worked at the buttons of his uniform shirt roughly, undoing them from the top down, slowly exposing more and more of the truth beneath. Once he'd completely removed them, he folded his shirt and blazer up, leaving them on the pipe he'd sat on earlier.

Allen's shirt really was too tight on him, shifting over his body with every twitch and flex of his body. It was clinging to him, to the slate of his stomach, to the planes of his collar, to the tendons in his back.

Neah wasn't really sure what a 'good body' was, but he really liked looking at Link's. He was broad-shouldered, but slight of frame, and there wasn't an inch of fat on him.

Link stood there silently, wearing Allen's shirt, dressed in all his shame.

"How does it feel?" Neah asked. His mouth had gone dry. He was trying to keep himself from laughing. He felt that if he started, he might never stop.  "Allen's shirt, touching you in all the same places it used to touch Allen."

"It feels wrong."

"But you like it," Neah said. He could feel his heartbeat picking up, too fast, too much. "I can tell. You little pervert. And you like it because it's wrong."

"I don't," Link said. He stared into the river. He was breathing hard. His cheeks were pink. "I _hate_ this."

"You're blushing."

"You're despicable."

"You don't need to be embarrassed about your body, Link. Not in front of me. Do you know why?"

"No."

"It belongs to me," Neah said breathlessly. "It's not yours to worry over. It's mine."

Link said nothing. His chest seemed to heave forwards with every breath, like he'd just run a mile.

"Bring it up to your nose," Neah said. The tone of his own voice shocked him. It was low. Husky. "I want you to smell it. Your scent. Allen's scent. Intermingling."

Hesitantly, Link gripped the hem of Allen's shirt. Slowly, as if moving through water, he began to raise it. Neah could see a hint of flesh, there — and the suggestion of Link's hips, the defined V of them. The hungry sensation from earlier had returned, intense, animalistic.

Before the grey fabric could reach Link's nose, though, he dropped it abruptly. His face was bright red. He looked like he might be sick.

"I'm going home," he said. His voice was tight, raw. Angry, even. He was grabbing his clothes and hastily throwing them on, buttoning it up, fast and sloppy.

Neah thought of forbidding him, of forcing an order, but he was afraid of what else he might say if he opened his mouth and starting speaking. Overcome by a strange mercy, he watched Link leave, trudging up the hill they'd slid down together.

Today had been a success.

Neah put his hands over his belly, which burned and burned as if full of fire.

A strange and  unexpected success.

* * *

 

  
Neah and Link returned to the river several times over the next two weeks. Sometimes, Neah tested him, prodded him. Sometimes, they simply sat and talked, and Neah was pleased to have someone listen to him ramble — even if that person had no other choice.

On slow days, Neah would tell Link about music, about choreography, about balletic orchestra, and how he was learning to compose. He told Link all the best artists were outcasts — and suffered towards beauty. Link told Neah, in clipped, hesitant tones that slowly moved into wildly gesticulated rants, about baking, a surprise interest of his.

Once, Link came with a Tupperware of homemade almond squares. He'd wrapped one in a napkin and handed it to Neah. The moment the sweet, crumbling pastry had touched Neah's lips, he realized he'd been starving. His teeth closed around it in an enormous, wolfish bite. He chewed ferociously, swallowed hard, and dove back in.

He'd felt ravenous, then. He'd felt as though he was wasting away beneath the soft, forgiving folds of his uniform shirt. He'd suddenly wanted to eat the year away, to eat the spring and the summer and the fall.

Sitting at the shore with stone-faced Howard Link, Neah had wanted to wait and watch the bright things grow and eat them, too, because it was better to consume than to perish.

They never talked to one another at school, except for Neah to occasionally whisper instructions in his ear. It was better that way. Link's friends would never approve of Neah, and Neah didn't want anything to do with Link's friends either. They were common. Boring. Link was his one and only diamond in the rough — it was much, much better to have one perfect gem than a sack of flawed stones.

Neah asked Link about Allen often; after all, this was the heart of Link's madness.

"Walker is like an angel to me," Link confessed at one point, bending over to watch the river lap against the shore. Neah hummed. There was a musical quality to his laughter.

"Religious imagery? Really? How gauche, Link."

"Walker is kind," Link went on intently. "Good. Innocent."

"Nobody's innocent."

"Some people are." Link rounded on Neah, chin quivering with dignity. "Just not you."

"Do you see yourself as innocent?" Neah asked.

"I suppose. I try my best for the people who are counting on me."

"But you're not inexhaustible," Neah said, leaning up to fix Link with an intense stare. "Nobody can be completely unselfish. You must want things for yourself, sometimes."

Neah's phone started to ring. He pulled it out of his pocket, glancing down at the caller ID. It was Katerina. Neah declined the call and stowed his phone away again.

"I'm not certain I know what you mean," Link said carefully. Neah shrugged.

"At the end of the day, you need to live for yourself, I mean."

Neah's phone started ringing again. He declined it once more. Link frowned.

"Don't you need to answer that?"

"It's just Katerina," Neah said, shaking his head.

"Katerina?"

"My mother."

"Oh, Link said. "Do you two... not get along?"

"We get along just fine. She's actually a pretty good mother, I guess," Neah said. He laughed. It was an odd, private little laugh. "You know, she deserves better than a rotten son like me."

"If she's really a good mother, I doubt she'd think that," Link said, softer than expected.

Neah thought he heard a edge of wistfulness in his voice. Maybe even envy. He thought back to Link's big, white, empty house.

"Where's your mother, Howie?"

"She's dead," Link said, frank and without self-pity. "I live with my uncle."

Neah stretched his legs out, chewing his lower lip. "How's he?"

"He took me out of foster care." Link's voice was downright reverent. "I owe him _everything."_

Neah had seen Link's uncle around town before. Leverrier was a big man, severe and imposing in his dark European suits. He had a thick old-world style mustache, coarse hands with impeccably clean nails, and hard little eyes that gleamed with a peculiar intelligence. He'd always seemed an unlovably austere figure to Neah, but the more they talked, the more Neah was able to understand the way Link saw him.

Leverrier, to Link, was powerful, severe, and more than a little foreboding, but also downright magical. He was something like the character of Drosselmeyer from _The Nutcracker;_  menacing, to be sure, but intoxicating in his offers of power and growth. With Leverrier's harsh, affectionless grooming came the tantalizing promise of future grace. An opportunity for Link to eclipse the circumstances of his birth and discover new strength.

Leverrier was a guide. A mentor. An ideal. To Link, he was everything — just not a very good father, Neah knew.

"Dead mom, foster care..." Neah recited, counting Link's misfortunes off on his fingers. "Sounds like a rough time. Oh, you're also gay. That's gotta be a struggle, right?"

"I... don't consider myself to be struggling," Link said loftily. He didn't deny the gay part, though, which was probably progress. Relenting slightly, Link asked, "Well, are you struggling, Neah?"

"What makes you ask that?"

"You keep saying you're going to escape. What, precisely, do you need to escape from?"

Neah tucked his legs beneath him, suddenly wanting to fold himself up, to make himself slight

"There's no room for people like me in this town," Neah said. "People who are different. They don't understand. They never will. They're small, ordinary people. They have small, ordinary minds. And I'm the next Stravinsky, you know."

Link actually laughed at that, and it wasn't even an unkind laugh.

"Naturally."

"Anyways, there's nothing for me here," Neah said. "So I'm leaving. Any day now, really."

His only reason to stay had been lowered into the earth a long, long time ago. Link knew it, too, if the soft look he was giving Neah was anything to go by.

That  was something else to hate about this town. Everybody was always swarming for gossip, and the death of a child had been the scandal of the year.

Link, at the very least, had the decency not to bring it up. He was good like that, Neah's Link. He could sense the mood.

_("Sometimes, when I look in the mirror, it's not myself that I see," Neah told Link once in a fit of grief. Link had looked away immediately, as if to grant Neah privacy, and a silent moment of understanding had passed between them like a great gray cloud.)_

Every day, Neah went home and listened to Tchaikovsky in his bedroom. He would kick his feet up on the old desk his great-grandfather had built and think.

Something was changing. Something inside him was changing, something deep and personal and essential. He felt like he was on the verge of becoming something else, but he didn't know what.

Getting Link to reveal his true self would no longer be enough, he realized. He needed Link to admit to his perversion of his own free will. He needed Link to choose otherness, choose deviancy, to open his eyes and embrace the power of the other side.

He needed Link to choose Neah.

He needed to choose Neah over the angels.

* * *

 

It was a Tuesday when they got caught in the rain together.

They were on their way back from their kingdom by the river, riding on Neah's bike when the first advance guard of a storm came thundering from overhead.

"This," Neah said, speakingly slowly and mock-seriously against the curve of Link's back, "could be a problem, Howard."

"Perhaps," Link frowned.

As if to punctuate their conversation, lightning burst across the sky, illuminating the both of them in a brief clap of ghostly white light. The rain came down only a minute later, and it came down _hard._ The rain fell over them in thick sheets, slapping down against them with so much force it was almost painful. It soaked through their hair, their pants, Neah's shirt and Link's black blazer. They ditched their bike by the side of the road, grabbed their backpacks, and ran like madmen towards the nearest bus shelter.

Once safe inside, Neah started to laugh. It was hard to avoid. He was totally fucking sopping, his white sleeves and black hair heavy with rainwater. It had probably gotten into his backpack and make a mess of his textbooks. He didn't care. He was bent at the waist laughing, giddy, alive, electrified.

He lifted his head then, grinning slyly. It was then that he got his first proper glimpse of Link, soaking wet, panting hard, eyes bearing over Neah with unblinking attention. His damp hair curled at his forehead and stuck to the back of his neck, perfect braid coming untucked with the fierce shellacking of wind and rain. His cheeks were flushed pink, clothes plastered to his body to reveal the precise shape of it.

And then, Neah wasn't laughing anymore.

Link's mouth was moving. Neah wasn't listening. He could only breathe. Only tremble. Something strange and potent was coming over him, as bright and as intense as the hurricane ahead. It was seeping down into his bones, at once shockingly cold and undulating in its warmth.

"Neah?" Link frowned, pushing his wet bangs back. "Are you listening?"

Neah swallowed hard.

"Are you feeling quite alright?" Link asked, voice tinged with a genuine thread of worry.

Link stepped a little closer, wam and wet. Something in Neah caught, bent, and broke.

"Hold me," Neah said, before he could even think it through.

Link stopped short. His eyes went very wide.

"What?"

"Hold me," Neah said again, voice catching. He looked at Link hard. His every breath was shaking out of him in these shallow, jumpy little exhales. "Please."

Neah felt Link's eyes on him, prickling his skin, buttressing him. Neah stared back, both challenging him and pleading with him. He was just so cold. So very, very cold.  

"Do it right now or, or," Neah shivered violently, grasping for something, anything that could convince Link, "I'll text Allen, right now. This is an order, Link."

He started fumbling in his wet pockets for his phone, but Link raised both his hands up, placating Neah. A rivulet of rain was running through the divet between his nose and upper lip, lingering there for only a moment before running down to settle over his lower lip. Link tongue darted, soft and pink, and licked the raindrop away.

"Alright," he said. "As you wish."

He stepped up to Neah cautiously, as if approaching a wild animal. Neah shivered, but did not run.

Time seemed to slow down when Link put his arms around him. They were damp, freezing, but Neah could feel the persistent warmth of Link's body heat from beneath the wet layers of their rain-soaked clothed. Neah put his head on Link's shoulder. Link, disgusting, deviant, beautiful Link, slowly raised one hand to cup the back of Neah's neck, supporting him. Reassuring him.

_I'm here. This is real. I'm here. This is real. You're not alone, Neah._

"You couldn't have texted Allen if you wanted to," Link said later, once the rain had ceased and they'd biked up to the front stoop of his house. "You two aren't friends. There's no way you have his phone number."

Neah froze.

"Then why did you do it?"

"I don't know." Link was wringing water from his wet braid. "Because you asked me to, I suppose. Or perhaps because... you seemed to need it."

"Oh," Neah said. Link cracked a small smile. Something in his eyes had changed. They seemed curious. Rapacious.

"You know, Neah, every now and then, I'm shocked to remember just how human you can be."

Neah touched his own cheeks and realized he was blushing. Link turned around, then, and headed up the steps to his house.

Neah watched Link disappear through his front door, retreating back into that huge, loveless castle. All the while, he touched his own rain-slicked lips with his thumb.

He started thinking of other things he should have asked Link to do, alone in the rain.

* * *

 

That night, Neah dreamed he was sitting at his desk. Link was sitting right in front of him, just as he always did. His beautiful braid hung between his shoulder blades. He was facing away from Neah, staring up at the blackboard.

In the dream, Neah cut Link’s blonde braid off with a knife and ran away. He ran out of their classroom, down the hall, and out the front gate. He ran all the way home, breathless and giddy, lighter and happier than he’d felt in a long, long time. Since before his brother's death.

(Mana, the sweet son. Mana, the hurt to Neah's rage. Mana, the one who should've lived.)

In the dream, Neah escaped into Katerina’s garden. He closed the white wicker gate behind him, sealing himself away from the world. Once alone, he collapsed to his knees immediately, cradling his stolen prize. Link’s braid was soft and downy and tufty. It was the colour of wheat. Neah crawled through the mud and dirt, gasping and heaving, clutching Link’s sweet-smelling hair to his chest.

In the dream, he dug a shallow hole in the earth. He buried the braid. He stayed in the garden for what felt like weeks. He watered it. He tended to it. Then, miraculously, something began to sprout! Neah clawed through the dirt curiously, and there emerged another Link, a Link that was Neah’s and Neah’s alone!

They became lovers immediately. Link was obedient, pliant, and unabashedly naked. When Neah said, “Kiss me!” Link kissed him. When Neah said, “Touch me!” Link touched him. When Neah said, “Come for me!” Link came, better and hotter than anything Neah could’ve imagined, head thrown back, lips parted, shaking and moaning.

In the dream, Link undressed Neah with slow, reverent hands.

In the dream, Link fucked into Neah with shameless, open desire.

In the dream, Neah lost his virginity in his mother’s garden.

In the dream, Link understood him, accepted him, and, above all else, loved him. Link was insatiable in his appetites, attentive in his affections, but always calm and placating and serious with that measured brown-eyed stare.

And Neah loved him back, in the dream.

If they were both sickos, that was okay. If this town didn’t want them, that was okay, too. It would all be alright, everything, because they could escape together. It was love and sex and sickness and a promise;  the achingly beautiful promise of a world where Neah would never have to be alone again.

And that was the dream. The only dream Neah would ever need.

He woke up blindingly hard.

 _My name is Neah Campbell,_ he thought hazily, reaching down into his sweatpants to wrap a hand around his cock. _I'm a big, horny sicko._

He panted against his pillow, pumping himself hard and fast. He was still thinking of Link, Link's mouth, Link's back, Link's blonde hair, Link's poorly-concealed expressions of desire — God! What he would give for Link to stare at him that way, the way he stared at Allen. Thumbing over the slit of his cock, he imagined what Link's own hands would feel like on him.

It was no longer enough to destroy Link's mask. Neah was desperate to claim whatever lurked beneath. He wanted Link's dark passions, his sensuality and sexuality, his obsessive wants. He wanted them all for himself. He hungered for Link the way only dying men could hunger. He stroked himself at an uneven speed, now, working his cock up and down at a frantic pace.

They could run away together. They wouldn't need anyone else. Neah would steal Link away, would become the passionate black swan to Allen's sterile white, the Odile to his Odette.

Neah came hot and hard in his sweatpants, moaning and crying out the name of his perfect Prince Siegbert, _Link, Link, Link._

 

* * *

  
 At that point, Neah had made up his mind about Link.

Link was a pagan. An obsessive. An adoring pervert. He was a balletomane, through and through, in the way that some ballet fanatics would pledge mad devotion to one ballerina and observe her from afar, collecting bits of costume tulle and obsessing over her performances. Allen Walker was his object of worship, his mindless fantasy— in Link's own dreams, he had fetishized his image of Allen so deeply it no longer truly resembled the reality. He didn't love Allen Walker, Neah was sure, but his zealously constructed _idea_ of him. His angel, as he'd once said, as well as his sex icon.

You couldn't love an idea. Of course you couldn't. You could only love things that were real.

Neah was real.

And that would make all the difference.

That next Monday, Neah took his time at his seat, eyes roving over his braid, neck, shoulders and back and waiting, waiting for the lunch bell to ring— his chance to lean in and whisper in Link's ear. Periods one and two seemed to stretch on forever, all exam revision drivel so slow that Neah found himself drumming his fingers at the edge of his desk, anxious and impatient.

The moment the lunch bell tolled, Neah felt something in him go lax, relieved.

"Meet me at the front gate today," he said in a quick burst, leaning in towards Link. "Let's go back to your place."

He was going to feel Link's arms around him again. This was an almost unbearably heady thought. It kept him floating through the day, blurring, blotting, soft at the edges.

"Why the sudden change of pace?"

"A change of pace can be nice," Neah said. "You uncle won't be home, will he?"

"Oh, no. He only gets home in the evening," Link said, shaking his head.

"Wonderful."

Neah smiled and smiled and smiled.

They walked up to Link's house together, Neah pushing his bike up, up, up the hill and into the immaculately smooth driveway

He'd caught glimpses into Link's home before, but he'd never been inside. Once he was, he realized it was everything he'd imagined it would be. Almost everything was white, sometimes white on white, with the occasional allowance for chrome, glass, or stainless steel. It had a modern look to it; bare and Spartan, but intentionally so. Rather, it looked clean and classy, and it's emptiness reflected an avantgarde minimalist aesthetic rather than any kind of poverty. The white walls were impeccably clean. So were the linoleum floors. Perhaps they hired a maid.

Link took off his shoes the moment he stepped into the threshold and arranged them unobtrusively into the closet. Neah untied his own and kicked them off haphazardly into the threshold. Link observed this petty rudeness with a shred of annoyance, but didn't comment. Neah, after all, would be gone before Leverrier even had the chance to judge.

Neah wandered down the hall into the kitchen. Bright, clean, and by all accounts devoid of food.

"Can I get you something to drink?" Link offered. He was hovering  just behind Neah, looking awkward and maybe a little nervous.

"You gonna fix me up a scotch, Howie?" Neah looked over at Link. "Hey, does Leverrier ask you for that? To fix him a drink at the end of a long day? Maybe fluff up his pillows, rub his feet?"

"No," Link said. His face screwed up, all pissy.

Neah sighed, relenting. He hadn't come here to rile Link up.

"Maybe a tea," he said. "I don't drink coffee."

It turned out that Link and Neah took their tea the same way; so drowned in milk and sugar that it was practically syrup. Neah wandered about the main floor with his tea, taking tiny sips as it cooled and taking great care not to spill any onto the pristine white carpets.

"Where's your room?" He asked Link, curious, and Link brought him upstairs.

Link's room had that same look of emptiness to it. It was almost shocking. You could count almost everything in it on one hand. There was Link's bed, perfectly made-up and pressed into the corner of a room, a bookshelf (perfectly ordered, possibly alphabetically),  and a fastidiously organized desk beneath a medium-sized window. There wasn't much personality to it, outside of that fastidious. No posters, no hobby goods, not even any meaningful clutter to suggest a life outside that desk and that bed.

"You read a lot?" Neah asked. He wandered over to Link's shelf and pulled a volume off with one finger. This was thick, cumbersome volume. Proust.

"As much as I can," Link said. He sat on the edge of his bed, watching Neah prowl about the room with a look of vague suspicion. Neah hummed.

"What do you like to read?"

"Classics. Non-fiction." Then, as if embarrassed, "Poetry, I suppose. Sometimes."

"Poetry?" Neah tucked the novel back into the wall. "What kind of poetry?"

"Ah," Link scratched the back of his neck. "Sylvia Plath. T.S. Eliot. Wallace Stevens."

"Would you read some to me?" Neah asked, a little boy. Link seemed taken aback.

"If you bring me some, perhaps," he said. "I didn't think you'd be so interested."

"I respect the tenets of poetry," Neah drawled, forefinger running across the spines— some crackled with age, some some glossy in their plastic jacket. "Passion, freedom, desire. I know you must think me a cynic, but these are the ideals that drive me. Hey, how about this?"

He tugged a slender volume off the wall, one emblazoned with a name he vaguely recognized. Link's eyes widened.

"Baudelaire?" He said incredulously. "Passionate stuff, to be certain, but... well, he isn't very nice."

"Truth is another essential tenet of poetry," Neah said slyly, thumbing over the binding of Baudelaire's _Flowers of Evil_ with careless ease. "The truth isn't always very nice, is it?"

"No," Link said, reluctant. "No, it often isn't."

Neah flipped the novel to the middle and slid it into Link's empty hands, a strange, manic sort of excitement slowly taking over him.

"I came to terms with my truth long ago," Neah said. "It's always been deep inside me, pulsating like a second heart."

"What... is this truth?" Link asked, voice catching in quiet hesitation.

Neah smiled. He consumed Link with his gaze, hot and heady, and then imagined consuming him with his teeth, the beating crimson deep inside him.

"I can't say it," Neah said. "But maybe I can show you."

"How?"

"Read to me, golden boy."

Link looked up, just once. His eyes were flashing with a strange, nameless emotion — Neah couldn't say what it was. It came and went, hot and bright, like lightning, then disappeared entirely. Link looked down again, fringe falling over his face, and began to read in a calm, measured tone.

" _To swallow my appeased sobbing, I need only the abyss of your bed_ ," Link recited. His eyes were tracking over the page, hard and serious. Neah slid onto the bed next to him, right by his side, and Link startled, just slightly. _"A p-powerful oblivion lives on your lips—"_

Neah turned to watch Link, the both of them so close their thighs were brushing. Neah could catch the warm hint of Link's scent, so close, but still so far from him. Unbearably far.

_"And all the Lethe flows in your kisses."_

Link, Link, Link.

_"I shall obey, as though predestined."_

Abrupt and without fanfare, Neah climbed onto Link's lap. _Flowers of Evil_ collapsed from of Link's hands in silent shock, tumbling down to the floor with a dull sound, forgotten. Link's speech stuttered and died out, caught in a sharp breath of surprise that sent a curl of warmth to Neah's stomach.

Neah put his hands on Link's shoulder, knees bracketing Link's slender legs, pressing in close until they were chest to chest. With each slight movement, their thighs brushed, a sensation that was slickly intoxicating even through the safe layers of clothing between them.

Neah leaned forwards, pressing his nose against Link's neck. He met the pale point where the column of Link's throat met sloped into his shoulder and breathed in deep. His was a pleasant scent — Neah's first thought was aftershave, but Link was still too boyish for that, wasn't he? A shampoo, then, or soap. The scent itself was an intriguingly floral provocation. This was a glowing, creamy white hypnosis of mothball lilies, softer than it was indolic.

Neah closed his eyes, holding Link a little closer. Link's was a clean, luminous smell. Like the sterile hands of an undertaker, or the innermost sanctuary of a church.  Here was a musk-touched sweetness that managed to be both alluring and totally sexless.

Neah decided Link would smell much, much better if he sweated that dead scent out.

"Allen and I are about the same build," Neah said softly. "If you close your eyes, you can pretend I'm him."

Link closed his eyes. Slowly, awkwardly, he put his hands on the small of Neah's back. Neah's heart twisted. He was holding Link, and Link was holding him back, though he was slavering through his half-baked fantasies of Allen.

Neah wondered what would happen if he ground down against Link's lap. Or placed an open, wet kiss over his lips, blotted with the bloom of a bruise. Or reached under the loose hem of Link's uniform shirt to feel his skin.

Instead, Neah just smiled. He held Link close, arms around his shoulders.

"You're such a creep," he said.

Link didn't say anything, but he did open his eyes. He seemed to be thinking Neah's words over intently, mulling through them like spiced wine. He looked at Neah directly, eyes sharp beneath angular brows, hands still holding firm to Neah's waist. That struck Neah as odd, somehow. It was odd, but he liked it.

"You know, I'm a creep too," Neah added. His eyes flickered back down over Link's mouth, pink and parted, his lower lip lush and lovely. He wasn't going to kiss Link. But if Link wanted to close his eyes again and pretend he was kissing Allen, Neah was sure he probably wouldn't mind. In that moment, he felt he'd be okay with anything, so long as it involved Link's lips on his.

He was pretty sure he'd get hard if Link kissed him. Really, honestly.

Neah squirmed in Link's arms, ass grinding down over Link's lap. Link wasn't hard. But maybe he would _get_ hard. Maybe he'd get hard with Neah, against Neah, thinking of Allen. Allen's stupid-loving eyes and pale body and coltish affections... his lithe, boyish frame, as youthfully beautiful as the idealized _erômenos_ of Greek imagination.

A heady tremor began in Neah's hands and rose to course throughout his body. It traveled through his nerves like a bolt of lightning through a power line. He wasn't entirely certain what was driving it, whether it was hate or envy or sadness or desire or love. Perhaps it was some combination of all these things.

He realized that he didn't want Link to be thinking of Allen. Not anymore.

"Link," Neah said. He tossed his head back, exposing the column of his neck: an invitation. His hands slid up the expanse of Link's clothed back until they rested over his nape. He dug his fingernails deep into the flesh, and closed his eyes. His heart was hammering against his chest. "Let's run away from here. Let's go to the other side. Together. Today."

He wanted to be held like a bird in Link's hands, eaten, devoured, desired.

Neah waited, but Link didn't kiss him. He kept waiting, squeezing down against Link's thighs. Link didn't move. His eyes had been open for a while now, but somehow, he also looked like he was only opening them now.

"No," Link said. "No, I can't do that. I can't just leave."

Neah felt a hot prickle of panic.

"Don't be like that, Howard," he said.

"There are people here who _need_ me, Neah, why on Earth would I—"

"Because I need you most of all," Neah said breathlessly. He leaned forwards, wanting, seeking, chasing. "Kiss me, golden boy. Kiss me."

That should've been the magic spell, but somehow, it didn't seem to take. Neah grabbed Link by the lapels, trying to hold him in place, but Link was already shrugging Neah off. Neah lost his balance and fell against the mattress on his side. Link was standing up.

"No," Link said. He was fixing his shirt and pants now. His face was set hard and firm, having lost that faraway look to it. "Enough is enough, Neah."

Neah rolled over onto his back, lifting himself up by his elbows.

"Is it because of Allen?" He asked. "Listen, Link, my Link, I know — I know you _want_ Allen, but that isn't real, not like what we have. I'm real, Link — and I love you."

Oh, what a thrill it was, to live in the truth.

"You love me?" Link repeated. His mouth was pursed into a tight little line of anger, but his eyes were shining with real hurt. "You do realize how... utterly _insane_ you sound, don't you?"

"It's the truth."

Link was fixing his cuffs, which had come undone and slipped over his wrists. He looked angry, the kind of messy, piecemeal anger that came from a place of deep pain.

"I know I'm hardly an expert in matters of the heart," he said slowly. His voice sounded both powerful and breakable. "Still, I am fairly confident you do not _blackmail_ the people you love. You don't threaten them, or humiliate them, or attempt to control them." His hands stalled over his cuffs. "Perhaps what I feel... what I _felt_ for Allen wasn't love. I'll concede that. But what you feel for me? It certainly isn't love, either."

Link paced across the room, stopping at Neah's window. Neah pushed himself up to sit upright on the bed.

"You have this — magnetism, Neah," Link said. He laughed harshly into his hands. This was a bitterly unhappy sound. "Sometimes, beneath those edges, you just seem... wounded. And sometimes, I — I really do find myself thinking I'd like to kiss you. But I can't do that to myself, not while you seem to take such pleasure in my pain."

"I'm not trying to hurt you," Neah said. He stood up, moving to following Link to the window. Link flinched away, as if saying _don't you dare touch me._

"Then delete that photograph," Link said. "Right now."

Neah froze, hand faltering where it had been about to reach out for Link.

He couldn't do that. He couldn't. He needed it.  If he deleted it, Link would leave him.

Something caught in Neah's chest.

Link would leave him no matter what, wouldn't he?

"That's what I thought," Link said softly. "You know what's on the other side of those mountains, Neah? Nothing. Nothing you won't find right here. It's not just this town, and it's not just our class, and it's not just your family, and it's not just me. You'll never be accepted anywhere. Do you understand why?"

_Please, no._

"It's because you're a sicko, Neah," Link said. He looked tired.

_No._

"You can post that picture all over the internet, if it pleases you," Link said. "You can call Allen Walker up personally and tell him whatever strikes your fancy. I don't follow your orders. I can't... do it to myself."

_Fuck you._

"Please show yourself out," Link said.

Neah pushed himself up off the bed.

He showed himself out.

The moment that big, white door shut behind him, he was running. He ran to his bike, nearly threw himself onto the seat, and pedalled home hard, not giving himself a moment to breathe. He wanted his legs to ache with exertion.

He was home far too soon. He threw his bike against his garage, not caring if it skidded against the asphalt, and ran, ran, ran until he was in his own room and he was alone.

Neah curled up in bed. His eyes were hot and stinging. Stunned, he reached up to touch his face. There were tears on his cheeks. They had tracked all the way down to his jaw, leaving hot, salty streaks over his face.

Oh.

He hadn't cried since Mana's funeral.

That had been five years ago.

* * *

 

Two weeks passed, and June finally reached them at last. The cicadas, finally rousing from their seasons-long slumber, finally begin to sing.

It sounded like a dirge to Neah.

In the second week of June, the tenth graders finally sat down to write their provincial exams. Neah did alright, even without studying. Link, on the other hand, performed soaringly. The school board gave him some kind of fancy certificate for his academic excellence. Neah wasn't really sure what it was. Link and Neah didn't speak, not even once.

Once or twice, though, during the exams, Neah caught Link staring at him, lips pursed, eyebrows drawn, mouth trembling like he was just barely keeping himself from shouting something out.

On the last day of exams, teachers crowded around Link, already asking in chattering voices where Link planned to attend university. Link, precocious and overserious, assured them he still had over a year to make up his mind.

Neah spent his time alone, listening to Tchaikovsky and hating them all, hating this town he'd been born in, this town he would surely die in.

He deleted Link's picture from his phone. He wondered, with a pang of longing, if Link had gone ahead and burned Allen Walker's gym shirt, or even simply thrown it away.

All evidence of their time together, erased. Their contract, now voided.

Link had called Neah's bluff.

Victory was his.

* * *

 

There was no comfort to be found by the river. Not anymore. Memories of Link had polluted it, made it black and foul and wrong.

Once, this had been Neah's secret place. His sanctuary. A place to hide away from the world. He'd broken that secret by bringing Link here — and Link had taken that trust and run with it.

Rotten boy.

Neah went anyways. He watched the river flood around him, wet and long and bobbing with bits of white Styrofoam and sopping cardboard.

He used to watch it flow into the mountains and wonder where it was headed. He used to dream of lying on his back among the surf, letting the river carry him far, far away to its nearest delta; a great big basin, the ocean it would birth Neah into. Neah would be the son of the ocean; they would wreathe him in sea-leaves and crown him in yellow pearls.

The great, glorious impossibility of fantasy.

It was hard to imagine it now, the tantalizing promise of escape the river had once represented. The enchantment had faded. Now, he saw only the trash. Plastic cup holders and wrapping paper and the waxy, yellowish remains of an ancient takeout dish.

"This isn't even a river," he muttered to himself. He laughed, sharp, alone. "It's a creek."

He biked home, feeling heavy. His arms were heavy. His legs were heavy. He dragged his bike into the garage. In his head, he was drawing great circles; he was imagining every road, every river in the world looping right back into this very spot, land-locking him.

The door flung open in his face before he even had a chance to touch the handle. Neah blinked as Katerina greeted him with a big, beaming smile. She was wearing lipstick, and had a dusty pink apron wrapped around her waist. She looked happy. Happier than she had in a long while.

"Neah, you silly _goose_ , where have you been?" Katerina stepped aside, ushering Neah into the house. "Nevermind, you're here now. One of your little friends from school dropped by!"

Neah froze, too shocked to even fight off Katerina's guiding hands, which were pushing and pulling him into the house.

"What?"

"You know, I never get to meet your friends," Katerina said. She looked beside herself, like she might faint. The mere prospect that Neah might have friends seemed to thrill her beyond words. "I like this Howard, he's such a polite boy. You never meet _polite_ boys like that, these days. I told him you weren't home, but he insisted on waiting, such a dear."

"Link is here?" He asked. That age-old panic had returned, wrapping around his heart like a hot whip. "Right now? Why?"

"Well, _I_ don't know, he's _your_ friend. I told him he could sit in your room, if he was alright with waiting..."

"No," Neah said, finally returning to himself, but Katerina was already opening up his bedroom door and giving him a little push inside. Neah stumbled forwards, eyes widening as he took Link in — that favorite boy of his, who he'd not spoken to in three weeks.

Link was sitting stiffly on Neah's bed. He was wearing a navy blue blazer and a white untucked oxford. His thick, honey-blonde hair was done in a loose half-plait. Link's hard, blood-borne eyes reflected back in Neah's gaze.

Neah had never seen a boy so beautiful.

"I need to do some grocery shopping," Katerina said, oblivious to the tension. "Link, will you be staying for dinner? We'd love to have you."

"My uncle will probably be expecting me," Link said. There was a strange little warble to his voice, but Katerina seemed not to notice. "But thank you very much, ma'am."

" _Ma'am_ ," Katerina echoed, putting her hand to her mouth. She appeared to need several moments to compose herself. She was that ecstatic. "Well," she warbled, hand falling away to reveal a tight little smile. "I'd best be off. And don't be a stranger, Howard."

She turned around and closed the door behind them. Neah didn't say anything, and neither did Link. They listened to Katerina pad through the house, gathering her keys, removing her apron, pulling her heels on. They listened to the front door swing open and shut, the starting of the engine as her car pulled out.

It was strange, seeing Link in his own room. It was like seeing two distinct halves of his life collide. Here he was, silent and serious, sitting on Neah's childhood bed amidst his records and hastily tacked-up posters: Baryshnikov as Albrecht in _Giselle_ leaping like a pouncing cat, a black and white photograph of the legendary Balanchine instructing one of his pinhead ballerinas, a glossy print of sheet music to a favourite composition. Pieces of a world Neah did not belong to, of music and stars and velvet darkness.

"I've been thinking of cutting my hair," Link said, breaking the silence. This statement seemed to come completely out of nowhere, and Neah startled.

"Fucking what?" Neah said.

"Well. Leverrier says it's time I cut it," Link said. His eyes assessed Neah with some kind of special knowledge. "He's all but told me to. He says it's gotten too long."

Neah leaned back against the closed door. He looked around the room. There was a cup of hot tea steaming on Neah's side table. Katerina's manic attempt at hospitality, no doubt.

"You follow his orders?" _But not mine?_

"I trust his judgement," Link said. Then, with slow self-awareness, "His orders aren't... destructive to me."

"And yet, he threatens to destroy this part of you," Neah said. He went up to the side of the bed and pulled Link's braid over his shoulder, feeling the softness of his hair. Then, regretting it, he dropped it and went back to the door.

"You didn't tell anyone," Link said. Though he'd phrased it like a statement, Neah knew there was a question buried within.

"I deleted the picture, if that's what you're asking." Neah smiled, a sickly-sweet, cruel smile that came to him more easily than a scowl. "Were you expecting me to take my revenge, Howard?"

"Honestly, yes," Link said. He folded his hands over his lap. His feet were in a perfect fifth position. Trust Neah to notice that kind of thing.

"Seriously, what are you doing here?"

"I wasn't satisfied with the way we left things," Link said. He looked down at his hands, pursed his lips, then looked up again, eyes shining with renewed resolve. "I want to apologize. For losing my temper."

"You want to apologize," Neah repeated.

"That is my intention."

"Apologize."

"Yes," Link said.

Neah started towards the bed with violence. Link's eyes went wide. He opened his mouth, maybe to placate Neah, to calm him or maybe even scold him, but Neah wanted none of it. He put his knee on the bed and threw himself forward, right on top of Link, pinning him to the bed by his wrists. Link cried out in surprise, and at this, Neah could only hiss, moving to mock-straddle him.

"Look at you," Neah seethed. He panted, his chest heaving outwards with each breath. His golden boy, as cold as stone. "You're a real peace of fucking work, aren't you? You and your hollow apologies?"

"Let's not be melodramatic," Link sighed. He reached up to touch Neah's face. Neah slapped his hand away. "You don't scare me, you know."

"Nothing scares you!" Neah burst out. He raised one hand very quickly, as if he meant to slap Link across the face. Link didn't move to stop him. He just squirmed. "Christ! The way you just lie there and take it — your uncle hits you, doesn't he? But you don't care. Do you even care if you live or die?"

On an impulse, he wrapped his hands around Link's neck. Link's pulse jumped underneath his fingertips, sinewy muscles flexing and straining against Neah's grip.

"Are you scared now, Link?" Neah asked, soft and dangerous and sing-song.

Neah leaned forwards, arcing forwards aggressively to apply weight to his hold on Link's neck, catching him in a choke so tight that Link began to gasp and squirm, air whistling down into his lungs in only the shallowest pulls.

"Hey, Link," Neah panted. "I've got a question for you. If there's no other side, then what the _hell_ have I been living for?"

Link stared up at Neah. His brown eyes reflected some oceans-deep emotion. It was pity, Neah realized. His heart began to hammer against his ribcage in terrified agony, begging for release. Link pitied him! Pitied _him!_

"Why bother living at all?" Neah asked ferociously. He could feel something coming, something long and torn rattling up from his bones— he couldn't tell if it was a scream, a laugh, or a sob. "Why bother with _anything_ if this is all I have to look forwards to? Why not—  why not crawl down into Mana's grave and rot with him?"

Mana, Mana with his long hair and gentle smiles. Mana, skinny and knock-kneed at ten years old, chasing after Neah with a laugh in his throat. Sweet, delicate, crybaby Mana.

Neah would always, always hate this town, this town where Mana was buried.

"Answer me," Neah said. His hands were trembling around the column of Link's throat. "What am I supposed to do? What the hell am I supposed to do?"

Link lifted one hand, pale fingers reaching out for Neah through the darkness. The arc of his arm was balletic. His fingertips brushed against the side of Neah's face, settling over his cheek with all the tenderness and pathos and suavity of a dying swan. Neah's grip on Link went lax with surprise. Link took advantage, leaning up from the bed, his head moving towards Neah's in the dark.

Link's mouth found its way to Neah's chin and wrestled upwards, fought for Neah's mouth, found it, and rested there.

Link kissed Neah. It was a slow, clinging, careful kiss, brushing open over Neah's closed lips. It was Neah's first real kiss, softer and somehow wetter than he'd ever imagined it might be. It was a strange, sorrowful kiss. This kiss was old, much older than their sixteen years, and it both thrilled and frightened Neah.

Neah closed his eyes. Hesitantly, he opened his mouth to the kiss. He kissed back. Again. And then again. Link's hand moved to cradle the back of Neah's head. Their teeth clattered once or twice, a little painful, but not painful enough to deter either of them. On the sixth kiss, their tongues brushed up against one other, and it was then that they backed out shyly, breathless and alarmed by their own abandon.

Neah went blank for a moment, breathing hard. Link dropped back down against the mattress, breathing hard. He was blushing hard, and his eyes were flickering about the room nervously now. He didn't say anything. Neither did Neah. He swayed on top of Link, thighs still locked around the slender point of Link's waist. He realized that his hands, which had once been locked around Link's neck, had moved subconsciously to grasp his shoulders.

"Stay with me," Link said. He closed his eyes and coughed, rasping, still recovering from the vice-grip of Neah's chokehold. Neah felt a pang of guilt flash through him. Strange. He hadn't known that was an emotion he was still capable of. "You win, alright? So stay with me."

"You don't _want_ me," Neah said. The words come to him in a swift fall, like curtains descending. He looked down at Link's chest, the rise and fall of Link's each and every breath. "You want an angel."

"I'm not sure what I want," Link answered, raw, honest. "But I just can't leave you like this. That's what I've been thinking all this time. _I just can't leave him alone."_

Neah licked his lips.

"Because you love me?"

"Because you need me," Link admitted.

"That's not the same thing," Neah said. "Oh, my prince. That's not the same thing at all."

He shifted to back off of Link's body, but before he could slip off the bed, Link caught him by the wrists and pulled him back in.

"To me, it is," Link said softly.

They stared at one another. There was a precision to Link's gaze, an intensity to his eyes. They hummed like oil behind glass. Link's focus was incredibly, always incredible — and it felt incredible too, to be the subject of such devoted attention. Neah's heart was twisting in his chest. Twisting, twisting, twisting like the head of a pin.

Then they were kissing again. There was no saying who had initiated it, who had first pressed their lips, or who had first opened their mouth to deepen it — it simply happened, as easy and as natural as breathing.

Neah fell down over Link's body so that he was lying on top of him. They were chest to chest, legs twining together, kissing desperately, wantingly. They were learning the shape of each other's mouths. They were learning what felt good, how to repeat it, and how to make it better.

 _Good_ was when Link nipped at Neah's lower lip experimentally, _better_ was when Neah let their tongues slide up together, the glide hot and liquid. Link actually let out a little moan, just a quiet one, a sound that managed to be lower and sexier than Neah had ever imagined.

He muffled the sound immediately, ashamed and embarrassed, and Neah grinned. He was half-hard by this point, just from kissing. He aligned their hips together, Neah in black jeans and Link in cool, light chinos — and ground down, hard. They both let out little hisses then as their clothed erections rubbed against each other, the sensation going right to Neah's head and leaving him dizzy.

"Look at you," Neah purred. A slow warmth had crept up into his stomach and stayed there, burning him up. His hips jutted a second time, and Link bit back this perfect little gasp. Link was beneath him, hard, panting; it was almost too much to handle. "You're... you're a real pervert after all, Link."

Link wet his lips and flushed.

"This is a perfectly natural response to the situa— oh!"

Neah reached down between Link's legs with one hand to cup his groin, thumbs rubbing appreciatively over the telltale tent of his erection.

"Look at us," Neah said with a breathless laugh, a bit of his old sly smile returning. "A pair of perverts, rutting off in the dark."

Link covered his face with his hands.

"You're terrible. Incorrigible."

"And yet, here you are," Neah grinned. He pried Link's hands away and kissed him full on the mouth, dark and without shame. All the while, he kept rubbing at Link's dick through his clothes, now grinding down hard with the flat of his palm while Link's hips jerked and jumped into his touch.

"Aren't we," Link started, swallowing hard between words, his throat bobbing with the motion. "Aren't we moving a little fast?"

"I'm pretty happy with the way things are progressing," Neah purred. He started fumbling with the zipper of Link's pants, thumbing over it purposefully. "Unless you want to stop?"

Link paused, considering it. Neah toyed with the track of Link's zipper, not yet working to undress him.

"No," Link decided, shy and hesitant. Then, with more confidence,  "No, I'm just trying to keep my head together."

Neah put his hands to his mouth and laughed.

"Well, you can certainly try," he said. "Just know I'll be fighting that effort every step of the way."

Link rolled his eyes and let out this embarrassed little huff. Neah counted that as permission, and began focusing his attentions on divesting Link of his shirt. He worked each button off slowly, carefully, turning the process into a sensual build-up towards what was to come. Link really did have a nice body. Lithe, athletic, neither too broad or too waifish. Neah spread Link's shirt open and began to tug it away from his shoulders. Link, meanwhile, had gahered his courage and was tugging up the hem of Neah's own shirt —  Neah stopped to help Link lift it over his head.

They kissed again, then, wet and greedy and past embarrassment. They were bare chest against bare chest, and God, the feeling of skin on skin was so fucking good. Link reached between them, thumb grazing over Neah's nipple curiously, and Neah keened and grabbed at Link's shoulders when Link rolled it between his fingers.

"You're sensitive here?"

"I guess I am," Neah laughed.

Then, Link replaced his fingers with his mouth, and saying anything at all became slightly impossible. Neah moaned helplessly, his nails digging into Link's pale skin.

"It certainly seems like it," Link murmured, mouth travelling from Neah's nipple to the center of his chest. He pressed a kiss there, so gentle and pure in its intent that Neah nearly melted.

"I wanna get you off," Neah said. He grabbed Link's face between both his hands, and brought it back up to his for another long kiss. Once the both of them were properly breathless, Neah rested their foreheads together, the breath between them mingling like a shared lifeline. "You're cool with that?"

"O-Oh." Link was bright red. "If. If that's what you want."

Neah laughed.

"You're so transparent. Perv."

Neah kissed the tip of Link's nose, then returned to his zipper, dragging it down in one sharp tug. Shivering in anticipation, he began tugging at the waistline of Link's pants and boxers, dragging them down over his hipbone to expose Link's hard cock. Link kicked his clothes away, and as an afterthought, pulled off his socks. Once fully naked, he lay back against the bed, victim to Neah's inspection.

Link was big. Bigger than Neah had imagined, somehow. There was something almost jarring about the sight — it made Neah realize they were really doing this. Having sex. Still, Neah was hardly intimidated. Rather, all of a sudden, all his fantasies and desires seemed to intensify with threefold force. He wanted Link's cock in his hands, in his mouth, between his thighs, _inside_ him. He wanted Link to fuck him, like he'd dreamed. Link's hips crashing against Neah's, filling him up with his cock.

That would come later, Neah thought, when they were... better prepared. Still, the thought had him almost unbearably excited. Excited enough that he let out a hot, wanting sound when Link reached up and touched the waist of his own pants, tugging meaningfully.

Neah undid his zipper and shucked his pants, socks, and underwear off. He felt surprisingly unashamed in his nakedness, not vulnerable or exposed like Link. Rather, he actually felt a little powerful — he could feel Link's eyes on him, arrested by desire. Link's desire gave Neah agency. It made him strong.

Neah crawled back over on top of Link, the both of them now completely undressed. They were flushed, breathing hard, fully hard. Slowly, Neah slid his hands down the twitching slate of Link's stomach, over his hips, and wrapped one hand around his cock. Link bit his lip, like he was just barely keeping himself from making a sound. That wouldn't do. Neah began pumping up and down, stroking Link in long, even pulls. It felt strange, doing this to someone else, but good, too. Really good, especially when he got to watch Link's eyes flutter shut in pleasure, letting out low moans and gripping the bedsheets with both hands.

" _Neah—_ "

"I wanna try it with my mouth," Neah said suddenly, hand slowing over Link's dick. Link's eyes snapped open, but before he could protest or question Neah, Neah was inching down to rest between Link's thighs, propping himself up just slightly to be level with his cock. This wasn't something he'd ever done before, of course, but he'd seen porn. Read stuff. He knew the theory — and his own imagination had supplied possibilities of what might feel good or what might work.

He started cautiously, running the flat of his tongue over the side of Link's cock, tongue curling beneath the undersides of the tip before Neah stopped and decided to lick over the slit, tasting the slick of precome there. This was a salty, musky taste. It was strange, of course, but he found he didn't dislike it. Careful to keep his teeth behind his lips, he brought Link deeper into his mouth, sucking him in proper. At this, Link let out a louder moan. His hands, which had previously been clinging to the mattress, came to rest on top of Neah's head. He was gripping Neah's hair — whether it was to slow him or push him further, Neah couldn't tell.

"Oh my God," Link said. Neah popped off Link's cock and gripped it by the base, observing him. His chest was heaving upwards in heavy breaths. His eyes were glazed over. He looked debauched, fucking gorgeous. "Jesus Christ, Neah."

"Just relax," Neah smiled, and he went back down, testing to see if he could take it deeper. Link was big, bigger than he was, and he could feel his jaw straining slightly as he went down on him. Still, he sort of liked it, that strain. Like he was choking on Link's cock. That was certainly another thought that bore later investigation. For now, he worked up and down with his mouth, stopping occasionally to focus on a certain point at the side or at the base. Link's hips began to shake, occasionally jumping upwards in these shallow little thrusts that only drove his cock deeper into Neah's mouth, occasionally threatening to force his throat.

"Neah, Neah, w-wait," Link gasped. He tugged back on Neah's hair, hard, and Neah leaned upwards to look Link in the eye. There was a look in his eye that Neah had never seen before, wild and possessive and needy. Hungry.

Link had seen the hunger in Neah and matched it, fire to fire, dark to dark.

Neah had been right all along. Link was different. Link was the same.

Link reached down and tugged Neah upwards so that Neah was back on top of him, cocks sliding together as Link kissed Neah hard on the mouth, all propriety and romance abandoned for tongue, for heat, for animal desire. Neah was moaning, too, then, his hard cock rutting up against Link's, the friction between them unbearably good.

Link sat up, bringing Neah with him. He wrapped one long hand around Neah's cock, provoking a whimper from him as he rubbed it against his own. Neah could do nothing but close his eyes, work his hips blindly and hold on, slowly losing himself to the pleasure of Link's touch and the slow-burning heat rising in his gut.

Link came first, groaning against Neah's neck, but Neah wasn't far behind. He came with a high, almost feminine cry, come spattering over Link's fingers and over his hips and stomach.

They came down together, twined like the roots of trees. Breathing. Staring. Kissing, every so often.

"You're something else," Link said. He was staring at Neah with big, almost fearful eyes.

"Fuck yeah I am," Neah breathed. He collapsed against Link's body, languid, boneless. "And you are, too. My golden prince. My Link. All mine."

* * *

They cleaned each other up, quickly pulled their underwear back on, and lay down together. They were as lazy and sated as big cats in the Savannah heat, pelts baking in the sun after a hunt. Lying against the warm crook of Link's bare shoulder, Neah stared out the faded, frosty window.

He stared at the cracks in the pavement, the rust flaking off the street signs, the green and yellow grass tufting at their base. He looked at his neighbors’' houses and fences, same as they day they'd first been built, and then at his own windowsill, the whorls in the unpainted wood.

How did this town go on and on, never remaking itself, never losing itself? Neah would never understand.

The town felt like a mirage, a dream. A world spilling out, too small for itself. Here, the past was always alive, and it had no end— without time, each moment was erected and lived on into eternity. Empires and legions would rise and fall, but time would never touch this place.

Link stirred in Neah's bed, long hair following the loll of his head. He was sleepy, but not asleep; he lay there, quiet and pensive, watching Neah watch the world. Neah loved him, then, in that precise moment. It was a strange feeling, bigger than his boyish body. It made Neah feel like he was becoming something else.

Transformation, elevation. That was the essence of orchestra, and the essence of ballet.

Before, Neah had always thought that love inevitably ended in tragedy. After all, it was the old ballet stories that taught him this. _Giselle, Swan Lake—_ betrayal, sacrifice, innocence lost, heartbreak. Now, he wasn't so certain. Tragedy was rapidly losing its appeal. Even Tchaikovsky's mournful suites were failing to convince him.

He wanted to believe in everlasting love. He wanted to believe that that love could be good, and fulfilling, and make a disappointed life liveable once more. Even in a place like this.

Even for a monster like Neah.

Link lifted his head off the mattress and said, "Neah, if you ever run away, at least tell me where you're headed first."

Neah hummed, pressing his nose against Link's side. "So you can follow me?"

"So I at least have that option," Link answered. He closed his eyes. "One more thing, Neah?"

"Yeah?"

"Just... stay alive."

There was real pain in Link's voice. Neah realized then that he'd frightened Link with his talk of Mana, talk of graves, talk of death. If it had come from anyone but Link, Neah would've found this concern hysterical, but it _was_ Link, so instead, it made Neah's heart feel strange and tight.

"Okay," Neah said. "Hey, I can do that. Sure thing."

"Good." Link opened his eyes again. There was some clarity there. "How long until your mother comes back home?"

"Maybe a half hour," Neah lied. It was probably closer to fifteen minutes, but he didn't want Link to leave just yet. He stirred restlessly, loving the feel of his smooth skin sliding against Link's. Link made a soft sound, like a sigh, reaching out absentmindedly to run a hand through Neah's rumpled hair. "Getting tired, prince?"

"A little," Link admitted. "But I'm alright."

"Good," Neah said. He pressed a dry kiss to Link's cheek. "The night is still young, my Siegfried, and I'm not quite finished with you yet."

**Author's Note:**

> hurryupfic | tumblr  
> fuckhowardlink | twitter
> 
> \- The insert poem is _Lethe_ by Charles Baudelaire.  
>  \- Neah references ballet and related mediums throughout the text, Swan Lake most notably. If you smell an allusion or have any questions, feel free to address me directly.  
> \- This fic, of course, borrows heavily from _Aku no Hana_ , a manga I highly recommend; however, this story is not a perfect parallel.


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